News Brief

August 11, 2008

A revisionist historian living in Australia could be jailed.

Dr. Fredrick Toben of the Adelaide Institute, which espouses Holocaust denial viewpoints, allegedly defied a court order to purge Holocaust denial material from his Web site. Toben is awaiting the verdict of a contempt-of-court hearing in the Federal Court in Adelaide brought by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. The hearing ended Aug. 7. He pleaded not guilty this week to 28 charges alleging that he breached a 2002 Federal Court order to purge all Holocaust denial material from his institute Web site. The judge said at the time that Tobenâ€™s site â€œvilified Jewish people.â€ Among the claims Toben makes on the site are gas chambers did not exist at Auschwitz and that the Holocaust was â€œa lie.” Jeremy Jones, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, has been at legal loggerheads with Toben since he first accused him of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act in 1996.

An attorney for the council, Robin Margo, told the court on Aug. 7 that Toben should be fined or jailed for his continued defiance of the court order over the last six years. Toben spent seven months in jail in Germany in 1999 after being convicted of inciting racism.